Download Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, p. 94.

Land Empresarios
Moses Austin (1761`1821) In January 1821,
the Spanish government
agreed to Austin
proposal to let him
oversee the settlement
of 300 Catholic families
from the United States
to Texas in exchange
for a huge personal
grant of Texas lands.
(Calvert, De Leon,
Cantrell, p. 58.)
After Moses’ death, his son, Stephen F. Austin, assumed
his father’s contract. By 1825, Stephen Austin had nearly
completed the terms of his first contract, and that year
the government made a second agreement with him to
settle 500 families. Stephen received an additional three
grants between 1825 and 1831, but only complied fully
with his first contract. He used part of his grants for
speculating purposes, as did the other empresarios and
even some settlers who sought to turn a profit from the
Mexican government’s generosity.
Between 1821 and 1835, a total of forty-one empresario
contracts were signed, permitting some 13,500 families to
come to Texas.
(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, pp. 58, 61-62.)
The Investigation and Report of Mier Y Terán
In order to evaluate how the national government
might best deal with the troubles in Texas, Mexico
dispatched Manuel de Mier y Terán, a high-ranking
military officer and trained engineer, to the north.
Crossing into Texas in 1828, Mier y Terán reported
that:
•The province was flooded with Anglo Americans
•Nacogdoches had essentially become an
American town
•Prospects for assimilation of the Anglos into
Mexican culture appeared dim
•The Anglo settlements generally resisted
obeying the colonization laws.
Mier y Terán report spurred the drafting and
implementation of the Law of April 6, 1830.
Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, p. 64.
Manuel de Mier y Terán, 1789-1832
The Law of April 6, 1830
•The Law of April 6, 1830 intended to stop further
immigration into Texas from the United States by
declaring uncompleted empresario agreements as
void, although Mier y Terán let stand as valid those
contract belonging to men who had already
brought 100 families.
•Future American immigrants must not settle in
any territory bordering the United States.
•New presidio were established to check illegal
immigration.
•The Law banned further importation of slaves
into Texas.
Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, p. 64.
Among Anglos, a radical faction of the Federalists, which has come to be known
as the “war party,” emerged from the outrage over the Law of April 6. In the
summer of 1832, friction between settler and authorities trying to enforce
recently instituted policies regulating commerce in the Gulf ports and the
collection of new tariffs reached a high pitch a the military post in Anahuac.
Colonel Juan Davis Bradburn,
an Anglo-American adventurer
who had joined the Centralist
cause in Mexico, arrested the
lawyer William Barret Travis
when the latter attempted a
ruse to secure the release of
two runaway slaves that
Bradburn had in protective
custody. In response to
Travis’s arrest, vigilantes
gathered to call for his release.
When Bradburn refused to
surrender his prisoner, the
colonists, accustomed to the
Anglo-American tradition of the
separation of military and
civilian law, and to trial by jury,
labeled Bradburn a despot.
The Law of April 6, 1830, Resisted
Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, p. 64.
Turtle Bayou Resolutions, 1832
In June of 1832, a party of Anglo Texas
from around Anahuac and the port
town of Brazoria marched on
Bradburn’s garrison. A full-scale battle
seemed imminent, but while waiting
for reinforcements, the Anglos issued a
document known as the Turtle Bayou
Resolutions on June 13, 1832, which
cleverly argued that their actions at
Anahuac were not an uprising but a
demand for their constitutional rights
as Mexican citizens, adding that their
cause was in sympathy to that of the
Federalist leader, Antonio López de
Santa Anna, then attempting to
overthrow the Centrists, the party to
which Bradburn belonged. Higher
military officials avoided further
bloodshed at Anahuac by replacing
Bradburn and releasing Travis and
other whom Bradburn had arrested.
Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, p. 64.
Anglos in Texas, 1821-1836
• POPULATION: By 1834, it is estimated that the number of Anglo Americans and
their slaves reached over 20,700. This figure might well have represented the
doubling of the number of Americans in Texas just sine 1830, which highlights the
extent to which the Law of April 6, 1830 was disregarded, both by Anglos and
sympathetic Spanish officials.
• LIFE: Life in Texas was rough and rustic. Basic goods such as clothing, blankets,
and footwear were not readily available. Many lived off the land, which involved
hunting, fishing, planting small gardens and gathering nuts and berries.
• COTTON AND SLAVERY: With slaves and imported technology, some Anglos planted
and processed cotton for outside markets, and by 1834, Anglos’ farms may have
shipped some 7,000 bales of cotton to New Orleans.
• BARTER AND SMUGGLING: Due to a lack of currency, people bartered to obtain
needed commodities and services. Anglos found numerous ways to earn an income,
among them smuggling. The tariff laws that exempted Anglo products during the
1820s had not applied to all imports and generally excluded household goods and
implements. Taking advantage of this loophole (even in cases where is was legally
closed) Anglos brought merchandise illegally into Texas, and some even then shipped
the products to more southern Mexican states or west to New Mexico.
• EDUCATION: The foreigners established numerous schools in the 1820s and 1830s,
patterning them after schools they had known in the southern United States.
• RELIGION: Although Anglos had agreed to observe the Catholic religion in order to
qualify as Mexican citizens, the Church neglected them because of, among other
things, a shortage of priests. Hence, many Anglo settlers held illicit church services
and religious camp meetings.
(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, pp. 69-71.)
Blacks in Texas, 1821-1836
• Using the guise of contract labor, Anglos had been able to perpetuate slavery despite
Mexican disapproval. By 1836, the number of slaves in Texas numbered about 5,000. The
institution of slavery arrived in Texas with all its southern trappings, for whites sought to
recreate it just as it existed in the United States. As in the South, where society
delineated strict roles for the different races, in Texas many Anglos considered blacks a
racially inferior people suited to a life of strenuous labor and servitude.
• Anglos considered slaves legal property. Hence slaves could be:
•bought and sold
•hired out
•counted as one’s assets
•used as collateral
•Bequeathed
• To control the slave population, whites followed tried and tested policies, including the
liberal use of the lash.
(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, pp. 71-73.)
• Slaves attempted to run away when possible, often seeking refuge among the Indian
tribes of East Texas or in the Mexican settlements of the nation’s interior.
Tejanos, 1821-1836
• Most Hispanic Texans (Tejanos) lived in the ranching areas of Central and South
Texas. Many of them were the descendants of the first colonizers and presidial
soldiers assigned to garrisons through the Spanish period.
• As was the case before Mexico gained independence, Mexican society in Texas
continued to be a divided one, the emerging opportunities in commerce, ranching,
and politics during the 1820s and 1830s fueling the fragmentation. Government
bureaucrats, successful merchants or rancheros, and others who came from
prominent families made up a small elite. Among its members were Erasmo and Juan
N. Seguín, José Antonio Navarro, Ramón Músquis, and retired soldiers such as José
Francisco Ruiz and José María Balmaceda.
• The status of Hispanic women reflected both liberties and restrictions. Women
sued for military survivors’ benefits and engaged in the sale of lands, from which
some achieved financial standing equal to or surpassing that of some men. But
women also suffered from serious disadvantages. Law and tradition barred them
from voting or holding political office. Religion discouraged divorce, dooming many
to endure unhappy marriages. There was also a double standard: women
adulteresses were ostracized while a blind eye was turned to the philandering of
men.
• Hispanics supported education through fund-raising drives. Hispanics opened
schools in the following communities:
•Béxar
•Laredo (1825)
•Nacogdoches (1828)
• Militia units remained the primary form of defense, as had been common during the
period before 1821.
(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, pp. 73-74.)
• Catholicism remained the primary religion among the Mexican Texans.
Native Americans, 1821-1836
• Those tribes that the Spanish had targeted for conversion had by the 1820s either
perished due to wars and (European) diseases, been displaced from their native lands and
driving into the western regions, or had integrated successfully into Spanish/Mexican
communities.
• Only vestiges of the Coahuiltecans remained by the 1830s
• In 1824, setters from Austin’s colony launched hostilities against the Karankawas to drive
them from their ancestral hunting lands. During the 1830s, the Karankawas numbered less
than 800 persons, but desperately clung to survival by preying on Tejano-owned cattle, or,
in the case of those who gradually drifted back to their previous homeland, by “hiring out”
to Anglo settlers as casual laborers or domestic servants.
• The Plains Indians (Comanches, Apaches, and Norteños) remained faithful to their
traditional lifestyles, relying on a combination of the hunt and small-scale farming. Women
tended gardens, cultivating and harvesting corn, pumpkins, and beans, while the Plains
warriors sabotaged settlements in an effort to halt the encroachment on their land and to
take livestock, especially horses.
• The Caddos of East Texas contended with problems that threatened to unravel their
civilization. Alcohol, provided to them by American traders, enfeebled many tribes people
almost at the same time outsiders began penetrating long-held Caddo territory. Interlopers
included other Native American peoples from the U.S. South as well as Anglo empresarios
bearing contracts to establish colonies in Caddo land. By the late 1820s, the Caddos
numbered no more than 300 families.
• In 1818-1819, a band of Cherokees, bowing to legal and extralegal pressure by Anglos to
abandon their homelands in Georgia and Alabama, arrived in northeastern Texas near
Caddo land. They tried to settle near present-day Dallas, but were forced to relocate by
the hostile Plains Indians. They eventually settled in and around today’s Van Zandt and
Cherokee counties. The Cherokee actively sought to acquire legal title to their new
homeland from the Mexican government, but never received anything but vague promises.
(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, pp. 73-74.)
Immigration
Fundamental to the stability of the republic
was an increase in the number of its citizens.
Though difficult to determine precisely, the
population grew rapidly during the republic’s
existence, to about 162,500 in 1848,
according to one estimate.
(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, pp. 97-98.)
Peters Colony
Peters Colony: Established in
1841 in the upper fringes of the
republic, west of a line from the
modern-day counties of Grayson
and Dallas, empresario W.S.
Peters and his associates brought
to the colony 10,000 to 12,000
people by the early 1850s. These
newcomers to northern Texas had
descended primarily from the Ohio
Valley and the northeastern
United States.
(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, p. 94.)
Castroville, a French-speaking community founded by Henri
Castro with some 2,134 immigrants, took root on a land
grant near the Medina River, west of San Antonio, from 1843
to 1847. (p. 94.)
Empresario Henri Castro, founder of Castroville and other
small "buffer" settlements, struggled for years to settle land
claims with the Texas government, in spite of his success in
bringing European settlers to the Texas frontier.
Source: http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/forts/clark/images/castro.html
In 1844, Prince Carl von SolmBraunfels led Germans to Texas
under the auspices of an
organization called Adelsverein
(Society of Noblemen). In 1845, they
founded New Braunsfels in presentday Comal County. (p. 95)
The Growth of Slavery
The Texan Constitution of 1836 guaranteed the legality of human
property. Slave codes carefully defined the status of blacks as chattel
in perpetuity. Further legislation specified various punishments for
those found guilty of stealing slaves, encouraging slaves to run away,
giving refuge to fugitive slaves, or abetting slave insurrection. With
such official support, slavery as an institution expanded briskly. The
number of plantations increased, as did the slave population, from
5,000 black personals in 1836, to 38,753 in 1847.
(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, pp. 97-98.)
LOOKING FOR LIBERTY: Although a
failed escape would bring them
severe penalties, many slaves
attempted to gain their
independence either by joining the
East Texas Indians, such as the
Cherokees, or crossing the sparsely
settled, semi-arid frontier into
Mexico. Mexico soon became a
haven for runaway slaves; an
estimated 3,000 fugitive slaves
found refuge in Mexico by the early
1850s.
Individualism, Manly
Prowess, Disorder and
Violence
In its early years, the republic was a more-or-less undisciplined society in which
individualism sometimes was expressed without much inhibition. In many of
the republic’s fledgling towns, wild, vulgar, sometimes even violent and brutal
behavior flourished, and substantial consumption of alcohol fueled the general
lawlessness.
Early nineteenth century Texas was filled with perils for Texan settlers: Indians,
Mexican soldiers or bandits, dueling opponents, land-rights disputes, wild
animals. This persistent threat of danger fed the population’s general
belligerence and the high estimation of manly prowess. However, the very
bravado that led people to stand up and fight against their enemies nourished a
disorderly society.
A violent feud involving the so-called “Regulators” and “Moderators” erupted in
East Texas over land titles in the late 1830s. In 1840, there was a series of
public shootings and murders, and a reign of terror spread over Shelby Country
until President Houston sent the militia in to the lawlessness.
(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, p. 99.)
THE INDIANS
THE KARANKAWAS: Debilitated by sickness, alcoholism, and malnutrition, the Karankawas seemed unable
to stop the encroachment or the attacks leveled against them by the settlers. By the mid 1840s, the
Karankawas teetered near extinction as a recognizable tribe.
THE CADDO: The Caddo saw only a slight interlude from their own misery of poverty and displacement.
Lamar’s plan to expel Indians had led Caddos to retreat into Oklahoma, but Houston’s re-election as
president had proven fortuitous, and they had returned to Texas and established themselves along the
northwestern stretches of the Brazos River.
THE CHEROKEE: With the election of Lamar, Cherokee hopes for becoming recognized landowners
vanished. Despite Duwali’s logical argument outlining the Cherokees’ legitimate claims to the East Texas
lands promised them by Houston, Lamar pressed his demand for their removal, either the Cherokees would
leave peacefully or they would be forcibly evicted. The Indians chose to resist, and at the Battle of
Neches, in present-day Van Zandt County, regular troops and two volunteer companies defeated the
Cherokees and killed Duwali on July 16, 1839.
THE COMANCHES: The Comanches had no real tribal government: principally functioning as nomadic,
autonomous bands, agreements reached with one group meant little to the majority of the Comanche
people.
After a series of raids and counter-raids against each other, both Texans and Comanches seemed ripe for a
truce in 1840. In March, Comanches met with Texas at the Council House in San Antonio to negotiate for
the release of captured white women and children. The Comanches brought with them a young white
prisoner by the name of Matilda Lockhart, but they had purposely left the remainder of their white
captives behind. Texas authorities, who had panned to take the Comanche chiefs into custody and ransom
them for the return of all the whites, attacked the Comanche negotiators. Most of the Indians present
were killed, as were several Texans. The Comanche retaliated by torturing their prisoners to death. They
also attached and plundered the Texan towns of Victoria and Linnville. But Texas Rangers under Ben
McCulloch gave chase, and upon engaging the Indians they served them two punishing defeats.
In October 1844, Houston successfully negotiated a treaty of peace and commerce with the Comanches
and other western tribes. This produced a time of relative tranquility for the republic. However, the
Indians’ marauding never stopped completely.
(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, pp. 100-102.)
Juan Seguín
TEJANOS: After Texas Independence, Tejanos
faced a departure from their traditional way of life
and confronted white hostility. They were at a
numerical disadvantage, business was conduced
in a different language, and they were not
completely familiar with the new form of politics.
Despite guarantees in the Constitution of 1836,
Tejanos seemed defenseless against a people who
freely expressed their dislike for them. Many
Mexican families were banished from homes they
had known for generations.
According to Juan Seguín, who served as mayor of
San Antonio in 1841-1842, Béxareños came to him
seeking protection from harassment by white
antagonists. “Could I leave them defenseless,
exposed to the assaults of foreigners, who on the
pretext that they were Mexican, treated them
worse than brutes?” he asked. By the summer of
1842, Seguín had become a refugee in Mexico,
seeking to flee the enmity of whites who
considered him an accomplice on Mexican efforts
to reconquer Texas.
(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, p. 102.)
Without the congress’s consent,
President Lamar in 1841 dispatched 320
men for an expansionist expedition to
New Mexico. The Texans arrived in New
Mexico only to be intercepted by
soldiers who subdued them without
difficulty. The invaders quickly realized
that the people of Santa Fe did not
welcome their proposal of annexation,
and the Texans were escorted all the
way to Mexico City, where they were
imprisoned. Back in Texas, the
congress censured Lamar for the
blunder and might have commenced
impeachment proceedings against him
had his three-year term not been
drawing to a close.
(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, p. 107.)
MEXICO TWICE SEIZES SAN ANTONIO BACK
Mexico responded daringly to the Santa Fe
Expedition. In February 1842, President
Santa Anna ordered General Rafael Vásquez
to take San Antonio. Vásquez occupied San
Antonio for 2 days that March. Then General
Adrián Woll reoccupied San Antonio on behalf
of Mexico again, taking 60 prisoners before
retreating upon the arrival of Texan
volunteers. In response, Houston
commanded General Alexander Somervell to
lead an expedition of about 750 men toward
the Rio Grande. Its mission was to patrol the
border to prevent further invasions.
(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, p. 107.)
U.S. President James Knox Polk, in a
speech before Congress, April 1846:
“Mexico has passed the boundary of the
United States, has invaded our territory,
and shed American blood on American
soil. She has proclaimed that hostilities
exist and that the two nations are at
war.”
A few days later, Congress approved a
resolution declaring war on Mexico.
(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, p. 110.)
The loss of Texas and the war with the United States contributed more to Mexico’s
impoverishment, its apparent sterility, its xenophobia, its lack of self-esteem, and its
general demoralization than any other event of the nineteenth century. (Meyer,
Sherman and Deeds, p. 317)